


The Going Down Of The Sun

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [24]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: A bit ghoulish but cheerful for all that, Beaches, Gen, I got my research from The Google.Com, Literary Geekery, Non-Sexual Intimacy, secrets and lies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 01:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6403111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which our heroes discuss life, love, and the fleeting transience of all things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Going Down Of The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Daisy Ninja Girl requested an action scene, so here 'tis, with apologies for the brevity.

“Move and your sister gets it!” the burly sea captain growled.

“I'm not sure I want her back,” said Aramis lightly, hands carefully in the air. “You know how sisters get, making you carry all their baggage hither and yon. All those boxes; all the dresses in them. My back is breaking!”

She gasped in affront. “You positively _insisted_ I buy that green velvet in Mantua!”

“Only because the colour makes you look bilious, dear.”

A small high-pitched noise emerged from her where she stood on the water-wrinkled sand, one narrow arm tightly gripped by the sea captain. Aramis turned to the sailor behind him, ignoring the knife at his back. “You see how it is?” he asked sadly. “Always, she is like this. My poor ears...” Their captors laughed.

Then she pulled a pistol from the captain’s belt and shot him with it.

She tossed the spent pistol over the sand, where Aramis caught it by the hot barrel and clubbed his own captor with the butt. As the two men slowly settled to the ground the pair of them retrieved weapons - a knife, another pistol… Aramis flipped the knife calmly. “Anyone else?”

The crowd of sailors, untutored in villainy, grumbled and swore but moved away, to the one boat pulled up on the little beach.

Aramis sighed. “So this is San Sebastian,” he said when they'd gone, dabbling his handkerchief in a little creek that cut through the beach to the sea. “Basques, Gascons, and a little light piracy.” He offered it to her and she wiped a few drops of blood from her cheek and forehead. “Not even _dramatic_ piracy,” he added with disgust. “It's practically a cottage industry: we'd be taking food from their children's mouths if we stopped it and I don't think we can. _They're feeding their children_.”

She shrugged, giving back the handkerchief, and watched him clean the blood from his fingers, careful as a cat. “Not everything pans out,” she said philosophically.

“If the Spanish are planning on pushing troops through here they haven't let the locals know. I fear I have led you astray, Madame. My apologies.”

“We made bank on the trip,” she said, pulling a small but heavy leather bag from the captain’s pocket and spilling the contents into her hand with a smile. “I wouldn't call it wasted. But your Franciscan could have been more precise, I feel.”

“Next time I receive a last desperate plea from a dying man I shall first instruct him on the niceties of rhetoric and oratory.”

“See that you do,” she said with great dignity.

He laughed.  Then his face fell. “It is at least an hour’s walk back to town,” he said.

“Cheer up, at least you're not sailing.”

“There's that,” he answered sadly.  

“Also, I told the maid to be along with remounts.”

He brightened. “In that case, dear ‘sister’, let us enjoy this beautiful sunset while we wait.” They walked a little way, so that the bodies were out of sight, and their view of the clear waters of the Bay of Biscay unhindered. He whipped out yet another handkerchief and laid it in a graceful, fluttering motion over a driftwood log, and handed her down to it with a bow.

“So gracious.”

“You inspire me, Madame.”

“He told me a tale about a king on the beach,” she said musingly.

“Who did?” he asked, settling down on the sand and leaning against her legs. She parted her knees so he could nestle back into the warmth of her skirts.

“My grey gentleman,” she answered. “He put his chair on the sand, and ordered the waves not to sully him.”

“I think I know that one,” said Aramis. He frowned, “ _Dixit autem mari ascendenti_ … And then he spoke to the rising sea saying ‘You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity…’”

“That’s the one.” She tapped his temple. “Book Learning Man.”

“It is amazing what sticks,” he said musingly. “And how did he end the tale, your grey gentleman?”

“With a soggy king.”

“No pious homilies?”

She laughed. “He built dykes,” she added. “I saw them, at La Rochelle. Great hulking things to starve out the damned Protestants, and I saw him walking along the seawalls in the storm.”

“It must have been hard to find fish on Fridays,” Aramis said distantly.

She shrugged. “It wasn't something I troubled over.” She shivered, then. “He was a monster. None know it better than I. And here I am, still singing from his hymnal.

“Did you hate him?”

“Some things are more complicated than hate. He loved France - I know that much.”

She sniffed, then: “Your hair is growing long.” She carded her fingers briskly through the hair of his temples and forehead and then, more gently, gathered it into a mass at the nape of his neck and fastened it with a ribbon the colour of her favourite flower. “Stay away from de Medina,” she ordered.

He spluttered, almost dislodging the ribbon as she tied it. “My feelings are strictly admiration for a competent and gracious opponent.”

“And they were strictly brotherly for that little, what was it, Contessa? The one that kept getting poisoned -”

He bristled involuntarily. “And if _one more person_ tries it, I swear -”

“My point is, you get this look in your eyes and then you go _daft._ Why do you always fall for the troublesome ones, eh?”

“At least I _like_ my lovers,” he riposted.

“I liked Taggart,” she answered smoothly. “At the time. A very vigorous man.”

“Pity he lost his head, then.”

“What did you do with the rest of him?”

“Strung it up for the birds, in pieces, so they could get it down faster.”

“He shouldn't have threatened my prop- my protégé.” She tutted regretfully. “Some men are _very_ stupid.”

“Ha - you do like Kitty.”

“I could abandon her in a heartbeat and never look back,” she replied. It wasn't a lie. “But I would rather not have to,” she added, more softly.  

“And the husband?” he asked, still looking out to sea.

 _Oh, how daring_ , she thought, but answered, “Some things are more complicated than love.” He huffed quietly.

“The little king, oddly enough, was almost passable," she said, thoughtful. "Oh, he didn't listen to me outside the bedchamber (and how different things might have been if he did) but inside…  clumsy, that one, but eager to please in his way. He wanted so desperately to be - manly, I suppose - strong yet tender, gentle yet masterful. If one could lead him into feeling competent, he could be sweet. Yes, in the bedchamber I almost liked him.” Her lips quirked bitterly. “Though I doubt his wife would thank me for the lessons.”

After a time Aramis said, “Do you expect me to have an answer to that?”

“No, I suppose not.” She smoothed hair back from his forehead. “Maybe someday.”

With a rustle he fished out a little cross and held it up to the fading light. It was the first she'd seen of it since he picked it out of that abandoned house in Mantua. Despite the heavy dust the gold in it caught sharp glints of light. “‘None but he whose command the heaven, earth, and sea obey…’” he intoned, then, “Pff, pompous claptrap.”

“The tide is coming in,” she said, “The light is going down. Summer is almost over.”  

He stirred at the sound of hoofbeats. “Kitty is coming with our supper!”

**Author's Note:**

> \- San Sebastian is a small town just south of the border Spain shares with Gascony. Wikipedia tells me that in the 17th century the fishermen, encouraged by the poor economics and their king, supplemented their livelihoods by raiding French merchant shipping. Pirate… privateer… lines can get a bit blurred. It also owns a very lovely cathedral, San Sebastian le Antigua, and sounds like a nice place to visit these days.
> 
> \- Taggart and de Medina are refugees from story lines I cut because I want to finish this series, you know, at some point. I might flash back to develop Medina, though.
> 
> \- I first heard the story of King Canute as him ordering his men to hold back the water, and them trying and failing to build sand bulwarks. It's not an accurate rendition, as it turns out. The oldest version I could find (below) is a pious homily, with Canute stating that kings cannot command the sea, but God can, yada yada. And there's a later version prefaced with courtiers praising him excessively and him staging this as an object lesson to them, which is, I suppose, where the version I first learned evolved from. Shrug. Either way, I thought it might be a story Richelieu liked.
> 
> // https://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/Canute%20Waves.htm
> 
> ...The third, that with the greatest vigor he commanded that his chair should be set on the shore, when the tide began to rise. And then he spoke to the rising sea saying “You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity. Therefore, I order you not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the clothes or body of your Lord”. But the sea carried on rising as usual without any reverence for his person, and soaked his feet and legs. Then he moving away said: “All the inhabitants of the world should know that the power of kings is vain and trivial, and that none is worthy the name of king but He whose command the heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws”. Therefore King Cnut never afterwards placed the crown on his head, but above a picture of the Lord nailed to the cross, turning it forever into a means to praise God, the great king. By whose mercy may the soul of King Cnut enjoy peace.
> 
> ...Tertium, quid cum maximo vigore imperii, sedile suum in littore maris, cum ascenderet, statui iussit. Dixit autem mari ascendenti, tu meae ditionis es, & terra in qua sedeo mea est: nec fuit qui impune meo resisteret imperio. Imperio igitur tibi, ne in terram meam ascendas, nec vestes nec membra dominatoris tui madefacere praesumas. Mare vero de more conscendens pedes regis & crura, since reverentia madefecit. Rex igitur resiliens ait. Sciant omnes habitantes orbem vanam & frivolam regum esse potentiam, nec regis qempiam nomine dignum praeter eum, cuius nutui coelum terra mare legibus obediunt aeternis, [Rex igitur Cnut nunquam postea coronam auream cervici sua imposuit, sed super imaginem Domini, quae cruci affixa erat, posuit eam in aeternum, in laudem Dei regis magni:] Cuius misericordia Cnut regis anima quiete fruatur.


End file.
